Can Hugh Hefner’s 26-Year-Old Son Make Playboy Sexy—and Relevant—Again?

Cooper Hefner shares his famous dad’s ambitions—but not his lifestyle.

Cooper Hefner
Playboy Enterprises Chief Creative Officer Cooper Hefner (C) poses with Playboy Bunnies during the Playboy Presents: No Tie Party at The Living Room. (Larry French/Getty Images for Playboy)
Getty Images for Playboy

Cooper Hefner has the same eyes as his famous father, but he’s lankier and the 26-year-old is now the only Hef left in Playboy, the family business. In the past nine months since Hugh’s death at 91, Cooper Hefner has stepped fully into his father’s role as the creative mind of a 65-year-old empire that includes cable channels, cocktail lounges, clothing and accessory lines, and of course, the magazine. Cooper has to save one of the world’s most recognized brands from its own graying boomer-ness and turn it into something that will be sexy and relevant today. For Cooper, the path forward in this era of online porn and cable-TV sex is to look back at the early days of his father’s career.

People close to Cooper say that he has been deeply affected by his father’s death, and it has motivated him to bring the brand back to where it was 20 years ago. Cooper is trying to wipe away decades of spray-tan tarnish, writes the Washington Post, which means that he has had to question some of his father’s choices, like the 2015 decision to end nudity in the magazine.

Cooper’s first act was to bring back the skin, enlisting his fiancé, former Harry Potter actress Scarlett Byrne, to pose bottomless and pen an essay about “freeing the nipple.” The younger Hefner said he is also working to diversify the beauty seen in the pages of the magazine.

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